Quantifying Effort in American Football

Introduction:

• Quantifying effort for running backs from the NFL 2022 season

• Why is this important?

  • Traditional stats miss the “how” behind play values such as yards gained, expected added points, etc.
  • Evaluating running backs’ effort and performance

Data: 2022 NFL Season

• Data description
  • Game, play, player, tracking data from Weeks 1-9 [^1]
  • Running plays where a running back (RB) is the ball carrier
  • Trimmed each play to frames between handoff and end of play
• Relevant data pre-processing steps
  • Fatigue (back up vs starting running backs)

Plan of Action

Completed Steps